Warren Buffett on Wind farms

 

Warren Buffett knows what he is talking about:

 'We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit.'

The truth about wind and solar power: "Their output is entirely unable to respond to electricity demand as and when needed"

It is good to be reminded of the fact that wind and solar power are not even close to solving the energy problems of highly industrialized countries:

there is a major problem with these renewable energy sources. Their electrical output is not dispatchable. Their output is entirely unable respond to electricity demand as and when needed. Energy is contributed to the grid in a haphazard manner dependent on the weather, and certainly not necessarily when it is required.
For example solar power inevitably varies according to the time of day, the state of the weather and also of course radically with the seasons. Essentially solar power might only work effectively in Southern latitudes and it certainly does not do well in Northern Europe. In Germany the massive commitment to solar energy might well provide up to ~20% of country wide demand for a few hours on some fine summer days either side of noon, but at the time of maximum power demand on winter evenings solar energy input is necessarily nil.
Electricity generation from wind turbines is equally fickle, as for example in a week in July this year shown above. Similarly an established high pressure zone with little wind over the whole of Northern Europe is a common occurrence in winter months, that is when electricity demand is likely to be at its highest.
Conversely on occasions renewable energy output may be in excess of demand and this has to dumped unproductively. There is still no solution to electrical energy storage on a sufficiently large industrial scale. That is the reason that the word “nominally” is used here in relation to the measured outputs from renewable energy sources.

Encouraging news from the UK: Developers are abandoning plans for new wind farms

Amid all the gloom created by Russia's aggresion in Ukraine, it's nice to have some really encouraging news from the UK:

Developers are abandoning plans for new wind farms in Britain because they are “no longer financially viable”.

The decision to scrap the wind farms is the first evidence that the spread of turbines across the country is being halted. It follows a radical overhaul by the Government of the consumer subsidy, worth more than £1 billion a year to wind farm owners.

Under the subsidy, wind farms are guaranteed to receive double the wholesale price for the electricity they produce. Under the new scheme, to be introduced later this year, companies will have to sell their electricity to the national grid under a competitive bidding system.

The new scheme will limit the total amount of subsidies available for green energy; previously the subsidy budget was effectively limitless.

The change has led to developers scrapping wind farm schemes amid claims that the new system will make future wind farms unprofitable.

Bye, bye, you bird killing, landscape destroying, ineffecient monsters! You will not be missed!

Americans should celebrate the fact the Congress allowed the tax credit for wind energy to expire

Americans should celebrate the fact that Congress allowed a tax credit for wind energy to expire, even if the wind turbine industry is whining:

Justin Williams, a wind turbine technician for Vestas Wind Systems, says the failure to renew the Production Tax Credit was a major blow to the wind industry because developers relied heavily on this tax credit to help offset the expensive start-up costs of wind turbines.

 

“With the [tax credit] not getting extended for another year, it really hurt the wind industry,” Williams said. “A lot of projects got put on hold.  It was a big tax break for these guys. It’s kind of what helped them get the financing to build these sites.”

 

Williams says it takes at least four years to build a turbine from start to finish. “It’s a big investment, with all the money up front. You don’t start making money off a wind turbine until at least ten years later,” he adds.  "That’s why a lot of people relied on the [tax credit].”

What the Vestas representative "forgot" to mention is that the owners of wind turbines will not after those "at least ten years" be able to enjoy their profits for very long:

The analysis of almost 3,000 onshore wind turbines — the biggest study of its kind —warns that they will continue to generate electricity effectively for just 12 to 15 years. --

 

The report concludes that a wind turbine will typically generate more than twice as much electricity in its first year than when it is 15 years old.
The report’s author, Prof Gordon Hughes, an economist at Edinburgh University and a former energy adviser to the World Bank, discovered that the “load factor” — the efficiency rating of a turbine based on the percentage of electricity it actually produces compared with its theoretical maximum — is reduced from 24 per cent in the first 12 months of operation to just 11 per cent after 15 years.
The decline in the output of offshore wind farms, based on a study of Danish wind farms, appears even more dramatic. The load factor for turbines built on platforms in the sea is reduced from 39 per cent to 15 per cent after 10 years. 

The truth about Germany's green capitalism: In spite of huge government subsidies (at least) half of the commercial wind parks are not profitable

A new study by Werner Daldorf, head of the Investment Committee at the German Wind Energy Association, confirms that not even the huge government subsidies - several times the market price - make German wind parks profitable:

But newly released numbers, collected and analyzed over a several-year period, show what disappointed investors have long surmised: Around half of these commercial wind park enterprises are doing so poorly that investors can count themselves lucky if they even get their initial investment back after the 20 year duration. --

Over time, Daldorf has collected a vast amount of material, filling shelves and shelves of binders. Taken together, it allows for an unprecedented look at the business affairs of over 170 commercial wind parks over the course of more than 10 years.
The result is sobering. On average, investors have received an annual return of just 2.5 percent. "Over the course of 10 years, that means a return of 25 percent, while according to the prospectus they were to have already seen returns of between 60 and 80 percent," Daldorf says.
Even if returns were to increase dramatically in the coming years -- a possible result, for example, of funds paying down their debts -- only wind parks in the best locations are likely to prove profitable. The picture becomes even worse once one digs into the details. A fifth of all wind parks for which more than 10 years of annual reports are available haven't once paid their investors a dividend exceeding 2 percent of their investments. --

Daldorf's findings are surprising given the substantial subsidies the state has provided to renewable energies over the years. The guaranteed feed-in tariff for a kilowatt hour of electricity generated by a renewable energy technology currently averages 17 cents. That is several times the market price. Indeed, generous state support is one reason that green investment vendors continue to advertise using slogans such as "You Too Can Profit from the Energiewende," as Germany's switch from nuclear power to renewables is called.

Read the entire article here

The German example should be a warning to all other countries, where "green" governments use taxpayers' money to subsidise these ineffective, bird killing, landscape destroying monsters. Green capitalism is not what its promoters claim it to be.

Reality overtakes hype: "Green" Germany returns to coal - "wind and solar power production effectively stopped in early December"

Reality has overtaken hype in Germany, which has been marketing itself as a world leader in "green energy":

IT'S been a black Christmas for green thinkers as Germany, the world leader in rooftop solar and pride of the renewable energy revolution has confirmed its rapid return to coal. --    

Countries such as Germany that have been most outspoken about climate change mitigation are reporting increasing carbon emissions and rising energy costs.
The US - derided by environmental campaigners as too slow to respond to the climate change challenge - has reduced its carbon emissions significantly while simultaneously lowering energy prices, fuelling a much needed resurgence in manufacturing.
The divergence has come about largely because while Europe has pushed headlong into renewables with generous public subsidies, the US has harnessed new technology to unlock vast resources of unconventional oil and gas.
This meant in 2012 the US spent about one-third as much as the EU on renewable energy subsidies, $21 billion against $57bn, according to IEA figures.
It all adds an ironic twist to the campaign mounted against the US by European nations for its refusal to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

While the German wind and solar energy lobbies have been busy peddling the "success" of their subsidized production facilities, the reality on the ground looked somewhat different in early December:

The scale of the "intermittency" problem for renewables - and the problem it presents for policymakers and energy consumers - was outlined in Die Welt, which reported that Germany's wind and solar power production effectively stopped in early December.
"More than 23,000 wind turbines stood still," it said. "One million photovoltaic systems stopped work completely.
"For a whole week, coal, nuclear and gas power plants had to generate an estimated 95 per cent of Germany's electricity supply."
The doldrums are the flip side to the triumphant statements from renewable energy companies when production figures spike in times of favourable weather.
This is a primary reason why political support for renewables is starting to wear thin. Indications are a Europe-wide squeeze is on, with the European Commission reportedly preparing to order an end to price subsidies for wind and solar by the end of the decade.
According to Britain's The Telegraph, the commission, which oversees the European single market, is preparing to argue that the onshore wind and solar power industries are mature and should be allowed to operate without support from taxpayers.
Frustration is also increasing at the costly failure of several multi-billion-dollar offshore wind farm developments which had once been widely touted as the future of renewable power.

Read the entire article here

Sanity prevails in Scotland: Scottish Power cancels the Argyll Array, which was to be the world's largest offshore wind farm

Another huge blow to the wind energy lobby - and a victory for sanity: Scottish Power abandons its £5.4bn plan to build the world's largest offshore wind farm, the Argyll Array.

Scottish Power has abandoned a £5.4bn plan to build the world's largest offshore wind farm, after four years of planning, because it is "not financially viable" (NNoN: not even the present high level of subsidies was high enough):

The decision to abandon the Argyll Array was a great victory for the No Tiree Array group, which yesterday welcomed the decision by the developer, calling the plans an "environmental disaster for Tiree and the west coast of Scotland".

Here is the No Tiree Array press release:

Robert Bryce: "Wind Turbines Are Climate-Change Scarecrows"

Robert Bryce, writing in the National Review Online, claims that wind turbines are nothing but climate change scarecrows. And he is of course right:

Global energy use has nearly doubled since 1982, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. As for non-hydro renewable energy, despite decades of hefty subsidies and in some cases, mandates, it now provides about 2 percent of the 250 million barrels of oil-equivalent energy (from all sources) that is being consumed globally every day.
The hard truth is that renewable energy cannot even keep pace with soaring global energy demand, much less replace significant quantities of hydrocarbons. That’s not an opinion. It’s basic math.
Last year, all of the wind turbines on the planet provided about 2.4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to the global economy. That sounds like a lot until you compare wind’s contribution with that of the world’s fastest-growing source of energy: coal. In 2012, global coal use increased by about 2 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Thus, just to keep pace with the growth in coal usage, we’d have to nearly replicate the entire global fleet of wind turbines — some 285,000 megawatts of capacity — and we’d have to do so every year. --

Now let’s look at carbon dioxide emissions. In 2012, the American Wind Energy Association claims, wind energy reduced U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 80 million tons. Again, that sounds significant. But consider this: Last year, global emissions of that gas totaled 34.5 billion tons. Thus, the 60,000 megawatts of U.S. wind-generation capacity reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by about two-tenths of 1 percent.
To make the point even clearer, let’s look at the history of carbon dioxide emissions. Since 1982, global carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by an average of about 500 million tons per year.
If we take the American Wind Energy Association’s claim that 60,000 megawatts of wind-energy capacity can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 80 million tons per year, then simple math shows that if we wanted to stop the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions by using wind energy alone, we would have to install about 375,000 megawatts of new wind-energy capacity every year. If we assume each turbine has a capacity of two megawatts, that would mean installing 187,500 wind turbines every year, or nearly 500 every day.--

Over the past few years, the U.S. and other countries have been subsidizing the paving of vast areas of the countryside with 500-foot-high bird- and bat-killing whirligigs that are nothing more than climate talismans. Wind turbines are not going to stop changes in the earth’s climate. Instead, they are token gestures — giant steel scarecrows — that are deceiving the public into thinking that we as a society are doing something to avert the possibility of catastrophic climate change.

Wind turbines are killing hundreds of thousands of bats every year

Not only birds are slaughtered by the inefficient and landscape destroying wind turbines - hundreds of thousands of bats are also killed worldwide by these taxpayer subsidised monsters. Alone in the US at least 600,000 bats were killed by wind turbines in 2012, and according to scientists the real number is probably much bigger:

In the process of creating sustainable energy, wind turbines across the United States are also taking a toll on a species that is vital to our ecosystem: bats.

More than 600,000 bats fell victim to the turbines in 2012, according to a new study. The turbines spin at up to 179 miles per hour, rising hundreds of feet into the air.

While many Americans consider bats to be pesky or scary, they serve a vital ecological role. They eat a tremendous number of flying insects and they help pollinate crops, such as peaches and avocados.

Published in the journal BioScience, this University of Colorado study analyzes records of dead bats found near the wind generators.

"Dead bats are being found underneath wind turbines across North America," wrote biologist Mark Hayes. "This estimate of bat fatalities is probably conservative."

Read the entire article here

Quote of the week: Nigel Farage on wind farms

Ardrossan wind farm.
(image by wiki)

Nigel Farage (UKIP) says it all:

“I’d like to blow them all up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single issue in my life more insanely stupid than despoiling our green and pleasant land and our seascapes with ugly bird- and bat-chomping monsters that don’t work.”

Wind and solar power put German net stability at risk - cost of a 60 minute blackout: 600 million euro!

Germans are beginning to see the reality of Angela Merkel's hastily undertaken energy transition policy. The huge subsidies for wind and solar power have led to ever increasing utility bills both for households and businesses in Germany, and - what is really worrying - the stability of Germany's electricity generation is at risk.

The German think tank Hamburger Weltwirtschaftsinstitut (HWWI) has now published a study, according to which the cost of even a short energy blackout - one hour - would be close to 600 million euro - no small amount, even in rich Germany.

Particularly Germany's industrial engine in the south should be worried, according to the study:

In the light of past experiences in Germany, the scenario of a county-wide blackout underlying our analysis may seem unlikely. However, recent studies point to considerable dangers for network security resulting from the shift in German power supply towards renewable energies (Dena, 2010). In this regard, a major drawback of electricity generation through wind and solar energy is its dependence on current weather conditions. An ongoing expansion of these energy sources will thus cause overall power supply to become more volatile and less predictable. In general, this renders the task of balancing feed-in and consumption volumes at each point in time more difficult for network operators. This is aggravated by a spatial shift of generation capacities. Due to climate conditions, the installation of wind turbines tends to be more profitable in the northern part of Germany, especially when considering the potentials of offshore wind parks. Already today, the result is a gap in the supply potential of electricity between North and South. At the same time, high-demand areas are still concentrated in West and South.---

A North-South divide is apparent, where the north appears more saturated in terms of electricity. In the South, only a few counties have high levels of electricity saturation, which are the locations of larger conventional power plants. Considering the fact that several of the nuclear power plants, primarily located in the South, have been terminated in 2011 and the remaining are set to be shut down in 2022, the level of electricity autarky in southern Germany will further be on the decline. The consequential need for long-distance power transmission will put further pressure on transmission capacities.

No wonder then that the CEOs of Europe's four largest energy companies recently called for an end to subsidies for wind and solar power:

The stability of Europe’s electricity generation is at risk from the warped market structure caused by skyrocketing renewable energy subsidies that have swarmed across the continent over the last decade.
This sentiment was echoed a week ago by the CEOs of Europe’s largest energy companies, who produce almost half of Europe’s electricity. This group joined voices calling for an end to subsidies for wind and solar power, saying the subsidies have led to unacceptably high utility bills for residences and businesses, and even risk causing continent-wide blackouts

UK Department of Energy & Climate Change censors its own infographics on wind energy land use

This is the infographic the UK Government doesn't want you to see:

(Hinkley Poin C is the new nuclear power plant to be built in Somerset)

The Telegraph reports that the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) quickly deleted the infographics from its website after the Renewable Energy Association called it "unhelpful".

David Cameron's legacy: "Green vandalism driven by greed"

If there is anything David Cameron's government will be remembered for, it's the destruction of the traditional landscape in vast areas of Britain. The village of Orston in Nottinghamshire  is just one example:

The village of Orston used to be the sort of place where nothing ever happened. People liked it that way.

The most notable thing about this quiet, leafy settlement in Nottinghamshire was that the parish church had a drum from the Battle of Waterloo.

But suddenly the 450 villagers have been pitched into a battle of their own, against green energy developers.

Four industrial-scale projects including a pair of huge wind turbines are proposed for fields on the edge of Orston, just outside the village conservation area.

“This is green vandalism driven by greed,” says one local, unfolding a map in the pub, The Durham Ox. --

The battle is being fought not just in this village but across the whole of Britain. There has been a surge in such projects in recent times as companies rush to take advantage of lucrative consumer subsidies, as the Government strives to ensure that 15 per cent of Britain’s energy needs are met from renewable sources by 2020.
Last year, wind turbine owners received help amounting to £1.2 billion. That was effectively £100,000 per job in the wind farm industry, paid for by a supplement on electricity bills. The total subsidy is expected to rise to £6 billion by 2020.
Over the last few days, energy companies have warned the Prime Minister that bills will continue to rise if they have to keep paying for green subsidies and environmental taxes.
Mr Morris, 64, the former renewable energy consultant, says: “The wind turbine situation is absolutely diabolical. Anybody with a business background can look at the economics of it and see that without the subsidies it would be an absolute no-goer.”

Read the entire article here

The true costs of the subsidized wind turbines in the UK (and elsewhere in Europe)

The true costs of the uneconomic, landscape destroying, bird and bat killing wind turbines to UK taxpayers and businesses have been calculated:

Every British household will pay an average of more than £400 in higher bills over the next six years to pay for subsidies under controversial Government plans to hit green power targets.

 

The money will go solely to paying for otherwise uneconomic offshore wind turbines, onshore wind farms, biomass plants, landfill gas sites and hydro power plants, new figures show.

The first analysis of newly agreed prices paid to “green” generators, carried out by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, shows that the total subsidy will be nearly £22 billion by 2020.

The subsidies are paid for by consumers and businesses through their annual bills and passed to the green energy generators.

Half of energy bills are paid by business, with the other half by domestic consumers, and the total subsidy divided among British households equals £425 per household. --

Dr Lee Moroney of the Renewable Energy Foundation, which is critical of the “green” energy plans, said: “Government subsidies which are added to electricity bills in order to meet over ambitious EU climate change targets are complex, opaque, and very expensive for the consumer.

The same story everywhere in Europe - the costs of the monstrous wind turbines are skyrocketing. But with the case for human caused global warming failing (nor warming during the last 15 -17 years), more and more people are beginning to realize the insanity of the European Union's climate policy. And the politicians will follow - otherwise they will not be re-elected ...
 

Europe's leading energy companies want to put brakes on the building of new wind farms and solar panels

Europe's leading energy companies are warning that the European Union's climate change policy is destroying Europe's competitiveness. On Tuesday nine leading energy companies - GDF Suez, Eni, Enel, E.ON, RWE, GasTerra, Iberdrola, Gas Natural and Vattenfall - presented a package  of proposals to the European Parliament:

 

The proposals, which call for “ambitious but realistic” targets, were designed to sway the ongoing debate in Brussels concerning new climate change goals for 2030.

 

Speaking to the Financial Times, Gérard Mestrallet, chief executive of GDF Suez, said: “We have to reduce the speed at which Europe is building new wind farms and solar panels. At the moment, it is not sustainable.”

 

Antonio Tajani, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for Industry and Entrepreneurship, voiced his agreement.

 

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph at the Ambrosetti forum of global policy-makers at Lake Como, he said: “I am in favour of a green agenda, but we can't be religious about this. We need a new energy policy. 

 

“We have to stop pretending, because we can't sacrifice Europe's industry for climate goals that are not realistic, and are not being enforced worldwide.”

Mr Tajani also warned that Europe's idealistic race for renewables was driving the cost of electricity out of the realm of affordability.

 

The vast expense of energy is leaving Europe struggling to compete against the US, he argued.

The price of natural gas in the US has plummeted by 80% as the shale revolution pushes forward, leaving Europe lagging behind in the industry competition stakes.

It is, of course, excellent that a person like Antonio Tajani understands the problem, but knowing the strength of the climate change and wind&solar lobbies, it is highly unlikely that very much will change to the better in Brussels.

UK warmists whining as government is reducing wind energy subsidies

On July 4 the UK TaxPayers' Alliance launched its "Stop the Energy Swindle" campaign:

"Families and businesses are struggling with their electricity and gas bills. Politicians should be cutting energy taxes to ease that burden. Instead they are adding to them on an enormous scale to pay for fat subsidies that support expensive energy sources like wind turbines and solar panels. People who are already finding it hard to pay their bills will not be able to cope with the big increases in prices needed to meet draconian targets for the energy sector. We cannot allow more families to suffer needlessly and more jobs to be driven overseas thanks to high prices here in Britain. It is time to stop the energy swindle."

Now it appears that the UK government is finally listening - and the "independent" warmist Committee on  Climate Change is whining:

The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has written to Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary, to warn that "required investment is at risk under current proposals".

Proposed reductions in subsidy levels for offshore wind farms this decade are too severe for the cost reductions that the industry can achieve, it warns.

Ministers also appear to have dramatically scaled back their ambitions for how much offshore wind is wanted in the long-term, undermining confidence in the sector.

This creates a vicious circle whereby developers are reluctant to make the investments that would be needed to reduce costs, the CCC warns.

David Kennedy, chief executive of the CCC, said: "I have spoken to every major investor and they are all concerned."

What the CCC considers a "vicious cycle" is in reality a much awaited virtuous cycle, which hopefully will be strengthened in the near future.

 

Thousands of huge, costly and ugly wind turbines destroy the landscape in northern Germany

Steve Goreham, Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America, has visited northern Germany, and noticed that the formerly idyllic countryside is cluttered by ugly wind turbines: 
Thousands of wind turbines have been erected in northwest Germany to capture winds blowing in from the North Sea. Almost 23,000 wind turbines operated in Germany at the end of 2012, with more than 10,000 located in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, the two states bordering the North Sea. Germany now has half the wind turbines of the United States, in an area much smaller.
These wind turbines dominate the countryside. Most reach more than 400 feet into the sky, taller than the Statue of Liberty. Newer, larger turbines stand more than 550 feet high to the top of the blade, higher than the Washington Monument. High voltage towers add to the disfigurement, constructed to transport electricity to populated areas of central and south Germany. --

According to figures from the German Federal Ministry, the 22,962 wind turbines operating at the end of 2012 provided only 7.3 percent of the nation’s electricity and about 1.8 percent of the nation’s energy consumption. Despite the location of many turbines on the windy North Sea, German wind turbines operated at a capacity factor (actual output vs. rated output) of only 17 percent in 2012.
The low capacity factor of German wind turbines makes wind electricity expensive. Driven by increased costs from renewables, household electricity rates almost doubled from 13.9 eurocents per kilowatt-hour to 26.0 eurocents per kilowatt-hour from 2000 to 2013. Today, Germany has the second highest electricity rates in Europe, more than triple U.S. electricity prices. --

Law requires grid operators to purchase all wind electricity produced at high fixed prices, even when consumer demand is low. When wind and solar output is high, operators dump excess power onto the grid, which depresses the wholesale price, even to negative levels. Natural gas plants have been reduced to a role of part-time backup for wind, making them unprofitable. Utilities E.ON and RWE have announced plans to close many hydrocarbon power plants that have recently become money-losers.
At the same time, Germany is boosting coal-fired electricity production. Electricity from coal-fired plants provided 44.7 percent of Germany’s electricity in 2012, up from 43.1 percent in 2011. Coal-fired plant output is expected to rise again in 2014 to replace declining output from nuclear plants that the German government decided to shut down after the Japanese Fukushima disaster in 2011. Due to the coal-fired ramp up, German greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2013 and will rise again in 2014.
So what has Germany gained by cluttering their idyllic countryside with wind turbine towers? Despite the recent rise in greenhouse gases, Germany’s CO₂-equivalent emissions have declined about 25 percent since 1990. If we accept the climate model-predicted rise in global temperatures of 3^oC for a doubling of CO₂, the small German emissions decline will reduce global temperatures by a microscopic 0.002 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.
As Winston Churchill said, “However beautiful the strategy, occasionally you should look at the results.”

Read the entire article here

Germany has for years now been the economic power house of the European Union. However, with electricity prices more than three times higher than what Americans pay, the forecast for German growth cannot be very good. And tourism will of course also suffer. Who would like to spend a holiday in a region where those huge and ugly wind turbines destroy the landscape?

The wind turbine madness must be stopped in Devon - and elsewhere!

This is a wake-up call for people in the UK and elsewhere. Only fierce protests can stop the wind turbine madness!

RWE, a German energy firm, wants to construct 240 offshore turbines, each 722ft tall – more than four times the height of Nelson’s column – to generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity.

The scheme, which could earn RWE hundreds of millions of pounds a year in consumer subsidy, is planned for an area 10 miles off the North Devon coast, eight miles from Lundy Island, a 1.7 sq mile outcrop owned by the National Trust.

Its developers say it will help Britain meet its renewable energy targets and could boost the economy by creating thousands of jobs.

But the plans have prompted a backlash from residents in Devon and Lundy, as well as environmental and heritage groups, who claim it could cause lasting damage.

Describing the Atlantic Array proposal as “truly alarming”, the National Trust warned it would “fundamentally change” views from North Devon and Lundy and pledged to fight it. --

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), a charity publishing data on the energy sector, calculated that it could earn RWE around £313 million a year in consumer subsidy under the Government’s Contracts for Difference (CFD) scheme.

Dr John Constable, director of REF, said: "The scale and pace of the EU renewables targets is unquestionably leading to devil-may-care development on and off-shore, which leads to concerns about local environmental impact, but these objections will pale into insignificance when the public understands that subsidising renewables leads to real, indeed major reductions in standard of living.

"For prosperity you need cheap energy; but wind power generally, and offshore wind in particular, is very expensive energy indeed."

Read the entire article here

The insanity of David Cameron's wind energy policy unveiled

The Telegraph's columnist Christopher Booker - with the assistance of blogger Richard North - unveils the insanity of the UK government's wind energy policy:

Occasionally, one comes across a story so mind-blowingly unexpected and out-of-left-field that it seems hard for readers to take on board that it is true. Such is the story I first reported here last month, under the heading, “Our lights will stay on, but it’ll cost us a fortune”, about the scheme being devised by the National Grid to solve what has long been the most intractable problem created by the Government’s plan to see the best part of £110 billion spent in seven years on building tens of thousands more wind turbines – namely, how to keep our national grid “balanced” when it has to cope with all those unpredictably wild fluctuations in the speed of the wind.

The answer National Grid has come up with, only made possible by the latest computer technology and “cloud software”, is to hook up thousands of diesel generators, remotely controlled by the grid, to provide almost instantly available back-up for when the wind drops. As we can see from recent reports, such as the National Grid’s draft consultation on “Demand Side Balancing Reserve and Supplemental Balancing Reserve”, this is now taking off into the weirdest and most ambitious scheme yet called into being by our politicians’ obsession with wind turbines. As uncovered by the tireless research of my colleague, Richard North, on his EU Referendum blog, owners of diesel generators are being incentivised with offers of astronomic fees to make them available to the grid – subsidies equivalent to up to 12 times the going rate for conventional electricity, and even, on very rare occasions, up to £15,000 per megawatt hour (MWh), or 300 times the normal rate of £50 per MWh.

Read the entire article here, and Richard North's comments here.

Spain is again showing the way for the wind energy industry - without huge subsidies it ceases to exist

Spain, the former international "star" of wind energy, is now the the best example of what happens to an industry that is totally dependent on huge taxpayer subsidies:

Wearing face masks and wielding sanders, two workers smooth the surface of a massive fan for a wind turbine at the Gamesa factory in Aoiz, a town in Navarre, northern Spain.
But in hard times, it will be winds in Finland, not Spain, that make the finished product spin.
Last year, the plant delivered a wind turbine park to Malaga in southern Spain and another to Burgos, in the north, said factory manager Javier Trapiella.
"Now we don't produce for Spain," he added.
"It has all stopped."
For green energy producers, Spain has changed from a paradise with generous public support to a markedly less agreeable home.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government is imposing an austerity regime to plug an accumulated energy sector deficit of 26 billion euros ($34 billion).
On Friday, the horizon darkened further with the approval of reforms cutting annual state aid for renewable energies by more than one billion euros.


Read the entire article here

The Spanish wind lobby is of course whining, but the taxpayers are grateful. Now it is up to the Rajoy government to stop the remaining wasteful subsidies. 

Spain is again showing the way for the wind industry ....